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Team:Chalmers-Gothenburg/Collaboration
From 2012.igem.org
Collaboration
iGEM is a big competition and this year there is over 190 participating teams. We are a quite small team and it was hard to find some time for deeper collaboration but when we had time we used it to make bonds and collaborate with other teams around the world. By helping and collaborating with other teams we can improve the research for all.
In the beginning of September the Uppsala iGEM team arranged a Scandinavian Meeting during a weekend for all Scandinavian iGEM teams. The meeting gave the teams opportunities to exchange information and ideas. It was also a weekend to create bonds with other participating teams and students.
The weekend started with Tour of Uppsala and ended with some game-play (real old games, no computers) and dinner at Kalmar Nation. The next day all teams had time to present their project for each other and to listen to other interesting seminars. After the presentation the teams were divided into smaller groups and each group discussed a specific topic like human practices, keeping track in the lab, sponsoring and how to build a team. Lots of experience was exchanged between the teams and hidden problems were discovered. In the same way new ideas for further exploring came up. The day ended in a more relaxed way, eating some pizza and talking about other things than science and iGEM.
During the third day we met the father of synthetic biology, Herbert Boyer. He listened to all teams presentation and gave smart some smart advice for us to use during the European Jamboree. Chalmers iGEM team, in fact, held a private session for Professor Herbert Boyer and the Uppsala Professor Anthony Forester and got much advice and many thoughts on new aspects of our project!
The whole weekend ended with a seminar held by Professor Herbert Boyer talking about the development of synthetic biology and new aspects of the discipline. And of course the weekend ended with making a whole bunch of new friends.
UCL radio show
We also had collaboration outside Scandinavia. We were participating in University of London (UCL) radio show by sharing the progress and future of our project. The whole interview can be streamed from here.
